Happy  New  Year  ...  2020

I took the last 3 weeks off and disengaged with social media and the markets.  It was my annual pilgrimage I take to analyse and review all my past trades and the notes I took with annotated charts of my trades for 2019.  This is something I learnt from reading the books on Jesse Livermore (the greatest stock trader of our times).  Every year he locked himself up in the vault of his bank with a cot to sleep on for the weekend to review all his trades he did for the year.  After reviewing his trades, he stuffed his pockets with all the CASH from his vault.  It was his way of spending some of his winnings in the stock market.

Doing a post mortem of all your trades is something that seasoned and disciplined traders and investors do every year.  It's a way to decipher without emotions, what trades worked for you and which trades you lost money on.  The idea is to polish up your skills and continue to do what trades worked for you.  It's a great way to learn from your mistakes.  The key is to keep doing what seems to work for you and mitigate losses by discontinuing what doesn't work for you.  The way to become profitable with trading and investing is to mitigate losses - first and foremost.  Keeping accurate notes of your trades is critical and something everyone should take the time to do it with pertinent details. 

2019 was a very profitable year in the market.  Last year at this time I was walking in my neighbourhood and wishing everyone I came across a  "Happy New Year".  I am passionate about the markets and I am always glad to discuss and share my market sentiments with anyone I engage with on conversations about the stock markets.  I walk in my neighbourhood everyday and most of them know that I deal with the stock markets.  They were all upset that the market had corrected almost 20%  in 2018 and they were just afraid to put any capital to work for them.  January 4th 2019 we had a  "Follow Thru"  day and I was preaching the IBD(Investors Business Daily) rule that Mr. William J O'Neil always mentioned:

Always buy Something on a  Follow Thru Day  

Unfortunately my sentiments were just brushed off by my neighbours.  They had a recency bias of the market crash of 2007/2008 that they had just witnessed.  They had their portfolios just take a hit of -60% at that time and were barely even by the beginning of early Dec 2018.  They just witnessed another hit of -20% by Christmas eve of 2018 and were expecting the sky to fall now.  This year I reminded them today when I once again was wishing them a  "Happy New Year"  that $SPY did +30.2% where as the leading growth stock index $QQQ that I monitor was +40.8% for 2019.  Unfortunately they told me that they had their monies invested in mutual funds and with professional money managers who once again underperformed the general markets as measured by the $SPY.  They all subscribe to my blog post.  I have consistently reflected my sentiments of the markets that the market is bullish and we have entered another cycle of bullish uptrend as of February of 2016.  

Some People Never Learn

Just for the record ... 

• $SPY   is +72.8% since Feb 2016
• $QQQ  is +118.6% since Feb 2016

2015 was a year of market consolidation.  All one heard in the media all year long on tv and print media by the self proclaimed financial GURUS was ... "Market is maxed out and due for a correction".  The stock and index charts were telling us that we were getting a  "Follow Thru"  day in mid February of 2016.  That was the time to actually start dipping your toes in the market.  Those that knew and took the time to learn to read the stock charts with volume and price action, have now doubled their portfolios in less than 4 years.  Bravo to those that followed the IBD style of investing in Growth Stocks. 

I am dedicating this wonderful piece of music that I was listening to yesterday.  It's from one of my favourite artist ... Jesse Cook.  I never miss his concert when he comes to town.  It's going to be at Capitol Theatre in Clearwater on Thursday January 23rd.  Enjoy the soothing music.

https://youtu.be/x8IN6XOWa4k

Happy Trading!

Amin